Coffee and Cockpits

by Jade Hart

  We turned into a room with a bunch of electronic equipment and a tunnel that I thought was a cat scan or MRI.

  We were pushed to the centre, in front of a desk with light boxes glowing with brain scans.

  The doctor appeared behind us and sat, her clipboard sounding loud against the desk in the hushed world of technology and medical apparatus.

  An itch drove me nuts under my brace and anxious fingers found the Velcro and ripped it off.

  Liam curled his lip. “Are you sure you should do that?”

  The doctor raised an eyebrow. “How does your neck feel? We were concerned your spine was broken. Luckily, it was just heavily bruised.”

  I tested, gingerly. Rolling my neck and looking left and right. The pain was bearable, nothing worse than what I dealt with in coma-Samoa. “It’s fine. I’d prefer to leave it off, if that’s okay?”

  The doctor smiled. “Sure. I know how uncomfortable those things are.” She sighed. “It’s rather unconventional to get you out of bed so soon after waking, but it’s best to encourage blood flow and ensure you are grounded firmly in this reality. I say that as a few times we tried to bring you back, but were unsuccessful. You fought,” she smiled, “both of you.”

  Liam reached out and took my hand. My skin sparked with awareness and I drank him in. He was skinnier than he’d been in Sydney, and the tan I was used to seeing was replaced with a soft cream.

  “I think I remember. I had a dream. It was stark and white and I hated it. I awoke to heat and island sun, then went for a morning swim.” He raised my hand to kiss the back of it, directly on top of the IV puncture wound. “That was the morning you brought me breakfast, and I knew I’d never be able to let you go.”

  My body melted. He’d been perfect in my dream, and now perfect in reality.

  The doctor shifted, a sad, soft smile on her face.

  Concern whittled along my spine, turning my sappy happiness into tension. There was something she hadn’t told us.

  Liam frowned, picking up whatever vibe I gave off.

  Running a hand over her face, the doctor said, “I suppose we’ll begin. The sooner I ask my questions and catalogue your experiences, the sooner I can let you rest.” She picked up a folder and pulled out a sheet of paper. “My name is Alea Ali’tasi. I was the doctor on call when your flight crashed at 1650 hours.” Her face fell, remembering what we couldn’t. “Ambulances started arriving not long after, and the hospital was overrun with burn victims, broken limbs, and casualties. You were brought in separately. Nina, you were brought in with Samantha. We didn’t think you’d make it. We suspected you had a broken neck and internal bleeding.”

  Liam and I shared another look, full of horror. No wonder my mind decided to pack up and go on holiday.

  Doctor Ali’tasi carried on, “Liam, you were brought in a few hours later once the flight deck could be reached. According to the fire brigade, the entire front half of the plane was engulfed with flames. You sustained a few injuries being dragged through the cockpit window.”

  Liam bit his lip, eyes far away, probably trying to remember. I hoped he couldn’t, it sounded horrific.

  “The next day, the hospital calmed enough for us to assign rooms and decide who needed intensive care. We were short staffed and overrun with patients, so we placed all the Kiwi Air crew into one room.” Her throat contracted as she swallowed.

  My back straightened; she was getting to the good stuff.

  “I was updating our records on your conditions and noticed something…” Gazing at us, she continued, “You were next to each other, with John Anderson and Samantha Wiggins against the opposite wall. Joslyn Duncan refused a bed once she recovered from her brief unconsciousness, and was content in the La-Z-Boy provided for relatives.” She laughed softly, her professional edge slipping a little. “You have one tenacious sister, Liam.”

  A fond smile brightened his face. “Don’t I know it.”

  Looking less like a doctor and more like an awed spectator, Alea said, “The strange thing was, when I took note of your heart rate and brain activity monitors they were the same.”

  “The same?” My fingers latched tighter around Liam’s.

  She nodded. “Almost identical.” Shoving the two folders at us, she added, “Here, take a look at this before I explain. You can see proof.”

  I looked at the printed graph paper. Lots of straight lines and squibbles stared back. I knew I held recorded data, but it didn’t really mean much when I couldn’t speak medical jargon.

  I looked over at Liam’s. It was the same. Right down to the small crest in one loop and jagged dip in another.

  The doctor leaned over and followed a squibbly line with her fingertip. “See how the output is identical?”

  Liam began to shake, the paper rattled in his hands. “So not only was it all real in our minds, but it was real in our physical bodies, too?”

  I knew I was looking at something amazing, but my mind was sluggish.

  Alea smiled with such wonderment, I almost fell off my chair. “In my nineteen years of practicing medicine, I’ve never come across this before.” Her eyes flashed with interest. “You shared brain synapses. Your minds linked. I don’t know how and would need to do years of study to understand it, but you’re a medical miracle.” Looking down at the charts, she added, “These are your brain frequencies. You hold Liam’s, Nina, and Liam holds yours.”

  Liam shook even harder, his head whipping to look at both. His eyes darted to the timeline on the bottom, but it was in code. If we were out of it for twenty-two days, how did it seem like only three in coma-world?

  “So everything we experienced. You can see that on these charts? How do you read it?”

  Alea shook her head. “Sorry, forgive me.” Her voice rose in excitement, pointing at the paper in my hands. “See here… this section represents a lot of stimuli. I’m guessing you were doing something adrenaline inducing or out of your comfort zone. We see patterns like this in REM sleep when the person is dreaming of something exciting. Do you recall anything like that?”

  Liam locked eyes with me. I shrugged. There were a few instances where my heart rate excelled, but the only thing adrenaline inducing was the flying in the crop-duster.

  Liam answered for both of us. “I think I know what we were doing.”

  Alea beamed. “Do you know what he’s referencing, without being told, Nina?”

  I nodded, whispering under my breath, “Kamikaze.”

  Confusion raised her eyebrow, but she just pointed to another section of waves. They were mellow, soft, with sharp spikes in rapid succession.

  “This tells me that you felt great emotion.” Her tone softened. “I’m guessing you had sex, or were intimate in some way.”

  My cheeks reddened, quickly scanning the page for more tell-tale loops and swirls of my sex life.

  Liam chuckled. “It tells you that?”

  Alea smiled. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question? Did you two have a physical relationship before the crash?”

  Liam looked at me, allowing me to answer. “No. We only flew together a day before the crash. I’m good friends with Joslyn, but I didn’t really know Liam…” Now I knew how he smelled, tasted, reacted. All of it garnered from our minds. It was so odd to think I’d shared everything with him and yet we’d only touched chastely in real life.

  Alea tapped a finger against her lip. “That is strange you bonded so strongly subconsciously then. I’ve been researching this phenomenon, and the only thing I came across was a reference to a couple who’d been married for fifty-three years. Their brain patterns adapted into cohabitation, showing the more humans are around their mate, the more in tune they are.”

  Liam cleared his throat. “I may have had something to do with that. I grew to know Nina from afar. I think my emotions were strong enough to connect with her, no matter what state of awareness we were.”

  My heart sprouted wings.

  Alea grinned, looking greedily at us. I sw
ore she saw us as guinea pigs and ground breaking information. Her eyes fell to the print out again. “Do you remember pain? Did your physical condition seep through, or did you believe you were unscathed from the crash?”

  Liam’s hand rose to fiddle with his bandage around his head. “There were moments that I suffered terrible headaches. Can you see that on there?”

  Alea’s smile froze and the creepy sensation that she wasn’t telling us the complete truth doused me. With a reluctant finger, she pointed to a series of jagged spikes that were the only thing not identical on my scan. I had a few twinges evident from my whiplash, but not as bad as Liam’s records.

  The kookiness of what we lived through made me jittery. All of this was indeed a miracle, but something lurked beneath the façade that everything was okay. Unable to stand it any longer, I demanded, “What aren’t you telling us?”

  I couldn’t speak for Liam, but I knew something was off. Call it my sixth sense or whatever. Why didn’t I remember anything about the crash? When did I drift into la-la land? The moment we crashed, or later, in hospital?

  I was shell-shocked, I supposed. I couldn’t focus on the deaths of the passengers. I wasn’t able to think about Sam and Anderson no longer being alive. I wasn’t ready to deal with all of that.

  Before she could answer, Liam asked, “Why did Nina and I wake up at the same time?”

  She gave us a heavy smile. Oh no, whatever I was worried about was linked to that question. I wanted Liam to take it back. I didn’t want to know after all.

  Alea began, “For the first twenty-four hours, Samantha Wiggins and John Anderson shared the same frequency as you. But it was fainter, less vivid. I saw it fading, and eventually they died.” Her black eyes connected with us. I curled closer toward Liam, hating our wheel chairs keeping us apart.

  Liam mumbled, deep in thought, “They were there in our world, but then they left.”

  I frowned. “In our dream we were only gone a few days. But Joslyn said we’d been out for twenty-two. It doesn’t work.”

  Alea shook her head. “We don’t know how time works in the mind. You could have spent an afternoon together, and it might’ve been three months in real life.” Clasping her hands on the desk, she added, “The answer to your question: why did you wake up together? The joint signal was fading.”

  My heart lurched, leaving my chest and flapping against the sterile floor. Fading? As in fading like Samantha and Anderson? One of us was dying?

  Liam shifted anxiously beside me. “What do you mean? Fading?”

  Chills shot down my backless gown. I clutched Liam’s arm. God help me if we hadn’t been through enough. I wanted to scream at her not to tell us, or punch her so she couldn’t.

  Liam held onto me with a death-grip. He cleared his throat. “Elaborate.”

  Alea hung her head, opening another folder, one that filled me with dread.

  “We discussed Nina’s injuries sustained from the crash. But we didn’t discuss yours, Liam.” She straightened. “As a doctor I have the amazing privilege of being part of miracles, but I also have the burden of sharing bad news.”

  No. No. No. Please no.

  “You suffered a severe brain injury. I was the doctor who operated on you. When you arrived from the crash, a piece of shrapnel had penetrated the cockpit window and lodged in your skull.” Her enjoyment at sharing our mind-link faded, professional decorum replaced it. “We had to operate on your cerebral cortex to stem internal bleeding and relieve pressure on your brain. The operation was a success, but we couldn’t know the extent of your injury until you awoke.”

  My eyes catapulted to the doctor’s as I clamped a hand over my mouth. I couldn’t look at Liam. Beneath the swaps of bandages did he have hair, or had they shorn him and left him with stitches from tampering with his brain? Would he be the same person? Had their tampering changed him? What did all of this mean? So he wasn’t dying?

  Liam grew unmoving beside me. I was a shaking, but he never stopped holding my hand. Finally, he said, “But I feel fine. How am I to know how the operation affected me?”

  Alea clasped her hands. “We’ll have to put you through a series of tests to determine what areas, if any, are affected. You have to understand, Liam. You were in a pretty bad way. The operation was to save your life. You almost died the night following the crash. We underestimated how bad your internal bleeding was.”

  Liam stiffened at the same time I did. My mind flew back to the headache he’d had by the waterfall. Was that when he suffered? Almost died in reality?

  The doctor asked, “There is one significant moment in your brain waves where you almost slipped away. Do you recall it?”

  Liam nodded slowly. I expected him to mention the waterfall, but he said, “I was in a restaurant one night. We’d had a rather stressful conversation, and Nina left.”

  My heart raced. The night him and Nikolai told me about Charlotte. My God. Where was Nikolai? Why was he in our dream?

  “The pain was excruciating. I remember drifting, just wanting to leave it all behind and let go.” His eyes met mine. “But Nina came back and grounded me. I stayed where I was. Thanks to her.”

  The doctor sucked in a breath. “I don’t know how to work out timelines, but you flat lined in the operation. I wonder if it translated to that moment.” She looked at me with the overwhelming wonderment again. “Nina, your feelings for Liam brought him back. We tried to resuscitate him on the table, but he didn’t respond. We had given up, when all of a sudden, his heart started beating again on its own.”

  Liam looked at me. I couldn’t look away. Even in a coma we’d been so connected. Maybe more connected than in a normal relationship. Everything was bared. No lies. No half-truths or games. Everything was amplified and pure.

  “So, he’ll be fine then?” I asked, not looking away from Liam. His arctic eyes were the same knowing and loving ones I knew in my dream world.

  “Concessions will have to be made, I’m afraid.” Doctor Ali’tasi ‘s tense voice prickled my ears.

  Liam and I both stared at her. “What concessions?” he asked.

  “The swelling affected part of your brain that holds long term memory. Most of the time, only one or two things are affected. Such as how to tie a shoelace or other mundane things like that. Sometimes, it’s more serious like forgetting how to drive.”

  There was a brief pause before Liam stumbled to his feet, panic scrawled all over his face. I looked up at him, terrified.

  “No. My God. No!” He clutched his head, trying to claw through the bandages. “It can’t be true. I remembered in my coma. It’s not true.”

  My heart shattered at his pain. I struggled to my feet, wobbling, knees buckling. “Liam. Tell me. What’s wrong?” I kept my voice low and caressed his cheek. Trying to calm him. I was dimly aware of Alea calling for help.

  “I can’t remember, Nina. None of it.”

  Fear closed my throat, but I forced it back. “Remember what?”

  He looked at me, his soul bared in agony. “I can’t remember how to fly.”

  All of it.

  Every flight I’d ever steered, every lesson I ever took.

  Gone.

  As if I’d never known.

  My employment was down the shitter along with my dream of owning my own airline. It didn’t matter that everything in the coma was real. Nina loved me. We spent some incredible moments together, but they never actually happened. All I had to show for the most perfect few days of my life was a brain scan hinting at some medical miracle. I groaned, piecing more and more of the discrepancies together. The island didn’t have clocks… because my mind couldn’t rationalize time. Nikolai didn’t really happen as he wasn’t injured—I just conjured him so I’d be forced to talk about Charlotte, and deal with my insecurities. The voices I heard? Most likely reality seeping through to my subconscious.

  Hell, I loved Nina, but did she really love me? After all, it was a figment of minds. Warped with pain and healing… did we real
ly experience such a soul-altering experience? We had no proof. No photographs, mementos, or even a bloody tan.

  What classified anything as real?

  And now I awake from the most incredible place to find catastrophe waiting for me.

  I couldn’t remember!

  My livelihood had been stolen by a piece of wayward shrapnel. My dream of flying in paradise decimated just as I met the one woman I wanted to share it with.

  I tried to stop panic from consuming me, to stay rational, but all logical thoughts imploded, leaving me terrified and lost.

  How could I expect Nina to still want to be with me when I was broken? I cringed to think how relentlessly I pursued her. No scruples about how I might come across as an obsessed idiot. I made her fall in love with me. I forced her to allow me into her subconscious for fucking sake. Who does that? And now I’d made her mine, I was useless. A sack of untrained and shattered human. A pilot with no knowledge of how to fly.

  I might as well have woken a cripple. My self-pity roared over me as I slowly sank back into my wheel chair, my legs protesting and creaking.

  “Liam. It’s okay. We’ll work through this. I’m sure your memory will come back.” Nina stroked my arm, inching as close as she could.

  I loved her. She was my other half, but at the same time, I hated myself for not being perfect for her. How could I expect her to love me if I wasn’t the same man I was in our dream world?

  A blistering thought caught me. “But, I flew in the coma.” My hand frantically grabbed Nina’s. “Remember…”

  Nina bit her lip, confusion racing over her face. “Oh God, Liam. You didn’t fly. I had the controls. You nosedived us, but I was the one who took off and landed.”